Language panic

  If I address a shop assistant, a policeman, a waiter, or anyone on the end of a telephone and ask them something in Russian they will answer or give me what I require and this is good.

I can speak Russian, not nearly as well as I should be able to after so long in this vale of frozen tears, but well enough that I haven’t had to rely on anyone to do anything that I can’t for a long time. When you are here at first life without a pet Russian can be hard work, I sold mine to buy cabbages about 7 years ago, but I digress…

  Here is what I digress from: If the Russian in question should hear me speaking English before I address him, or her, then the likelihood of brain lockup increases by 38.3 %, and, when you bear in mind that 75.4% of statistics are invented on the spot, this is problematic. Should I approach while speaking on the telephone, or chatting to a friend then, most times, I see the fear growing in their eyes. But most times as well, when I say what I need to say, they relax, secure in the knowledge that they have just escaped a bewildering encounter with a demanding foreigner and proceed to do what the world would have them do.

  But then there is that 38.3 % of them who can’t ever quite make the step back to normality, whether through stupidity, mental illness or severe neurological damage sustained in a childhood smiling accident, I could not say, but it is so. This can lead to absurdity as we discuss in Russian the nature of the problem before us. For example there was a recent encounter in an underground walkway with a seller of fine woolen goods, at -20, when I had cold hands, and little time to waste.

(I translate, but this all happened in Russian)

Polite foreign gentleman: “Good morning, do you have a pair of black woolen men’s gloves?”

Panicking underpaid woman: “errr…sorry…I don’t speak German”

PFG: “Me either, but do you have a pair of black woolen gloves for a man?”

PUW: “I can’t…help…I am Russian…I can’t…no we don’t have them”

Beginning to turn away, my eagle eyes alighted on, of all things, a pair of black woolen men’s gloves, an ideal pair for my simple needs, and they were hanging not 10 inches from PUW’s head…so:

PFG: “What about these then?

PUW: “Errr…yes, they’re wool, but I don’t understand, there is another kiosk over there”

PFG: “And does it sell black woolen men’s gloves just like these?”

PUW: “Yes, just the same.”

PFG: “You understand that we are having a conversation in Russian yes?”

PUW: “Yes, I mean, no: I don’t speak German.”

PFG: “Ok thank you, all the best”

PUW: “Yes, goodbye, you too.”

I always wonder if there is a moment a few seconds after I walk away where they grasp what has just happened.

Other ways this shit works:

The routine where I ask for something, and they write the price on a bit of paper, which I then read aloud to them in Russian and they confirm it.

The waiter, who insists on bringing me a menu in badly translated English, then stands there while I translate what I want into Russian.

The guy in the magazine Kiosk who heard my request for “Zhournal Dosug” and replied, with a voice full of contempt: “Please to speaking English”. So I said “A copy of leisure magazine Please.” Whereupon we stared at each other for ten seconds while he remembered that he didn’t speak English, then I repeated the original query and got what I needed.

There is a complex study in psycho-sociolinguistics to be written here, please mail it to the usual address when you’ve done it.